Learning Objectives

This course is designed to enable you to:

Understand the neuropharmacological changes produced by psychedelic drugs require perception, interpretation, description, and comprehension, in order for the experience to have significance for the user.

Course Description:
Psychedelic drug experiences are unique, malleable, highly variable, often tacit and profound in nature. The neuropharmacological changes produced by psychedelic drugs require perception, interpretation, description, and comprehension, in order for the experience to have significance for the user. Social context and reason for use can direct the types of effects that are experienced and described, whether medical-therapeutic, creative, spiritual, or destructive. Studies of metaphors and meanings in drug use suggest that meaning is a powerful component in drug-taking behaviors and plays a key role in how a drug is portrayed in society. Metaphors for the psychedelic drug experience are presented and described. Guidance on employing metaphors in therapeutic and other contexts is provided with the goal of improving beneficial outcomes from psychedelic drug use.

Biography of Presenter:

Michael Montagne, B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D., is Professor of Social Pharmacy and Senior Associate Dean at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences. Educated in pharmacy and sociology at the University of Minnesota, he then received postdoctoral training in psychiatric epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. He has contributed articles on psychedelic drugs to publications as diverse as the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, International Journal of the Addictions, Integration, the MAPS Newsletter, Psychozoic Press, and Psychedelic Monographs & Essays and book chapters for Tom Lyttle’s Psychedelics, Julie Holland’s Ecstasy: A Complete Guide, Michael Winkelman and Thomas Roberts’ Psychedelic Medicine, and Dale Jacquette’s Cannabis & Philosophy. His primary research interests are the meaning of drug effects, the social pharmacology of drug-taking experiences, and the process by which knowledge about drugs and their effects is socially constructed.